Write an Op-Ed or LTE

When writing your opinion piece about the REACH program, use a three-pronged strategy: Educate + Advocate + Activate. First, you must educate your audience, 99% of whom have never heard of Medicare REACH. Next, you advocate for your position by explaining why REACH is bad both for seniors and taxpayers. Finally, you activate readers to take action. Below are some key talking points in each step to get you started.

• Educate: Instead of paying doctors and hospitals directly, Medicare gives third-party REACH middlemen a monthly payment to cover some or all of each seniors’ medical expenses, allowing these entities to keep as profit what they don’t spend on care.
• Educate: Under this program, up to 30 million seniors who actively chose Traditional Medicare may be automatically “aligned” with a REACH entity without their full knowledge or consent — a serious bait-and-switch.
• Advocate: REACH Entities are allowed to pocket what they don’t pay for in health services, establishing a dangerous financial incentive to restrict and ration seniors’ care.
• Advocate: REACH is a threat to the future of Medicare. Experts estimate that REACH entities could spend as little as 60% of what Medicare pays them on patient care — keeping up to 40% of revenues for their own profit and overhead.
• Activate: If left unchecked, the REACH program could radically transform Medicare within a few years, without input from seniors or even a vote by Congress. Thankfully, the REACH pilot program can be stopped by the Biden Administration.
• Activate: Americans who want to protect Medicare for future generations should learn more about REACH, and call their members of Congress and ask them to stop this dangerous pilot program.